on worshipping celebrities -or not

This is worth considering, not least because the 'meme' about idolising and worshipping stars and the media-touched is such a common-place that it is about time we looked at it again. And that's what this article does:
The Other Journal at Mars Hill Graduate School.

"The perplexing thing is that while commentators and the media talk about celebrity worship as a kind of religion, interviews with fans and indeed mourners generally reveal that most have no sense that what they are engaging in is “religious” and that they would reject entirely the idea that the figure they are celebrating is a god. So celebrity worship is ambiguous; it is a kind of religion."

This may, of course, be a reflex of the sense that religion is something very 'other' and formal and to do with obviously 'religious' rituals and actions. So the ability to see the 'heart-enthronment' as at least potentially idolatrous. There really is no understanding which would relate these admiring, imitative, loyal and formational attitudes to celebrity with 'spiritual' or religious themes in most people's minds. This is 'entertainment' not religion. This is a bit of fun, not spirituality.

The separation of spirituality/religion from ... well, other 'stuff' is complete.

But what is happening, really? Well perhaps there's a clue here:

Madonna was able to reveal herself because of the willing cooperation of the media. We know about her because it is hard not to know. Through her self-revelation, she became the product. She commodified intimacy.

The bringing together of something that could be accessed through the regular channels which touched the devices and desires of hearts through culturally relevant and attractive means.

celebrity offers a source for identity and belonging: they are a store of orientating reference points or possible ways of living (or not living). The significance of celebrity culture relates, therefore, directly to questions of identity and the complex interaction between media representations, and to the way that these influence are taken into individual and communal senses of the self.

So it comes down to the way that identification and identity construction takes place in our culture. However, the relation to authority is different from traditional religion as we have often known it -or is it? Is it just that the way that different socially-powerful institutions are able to 'capture' the narratives operating at a popular level? In this case, the media, fashion and entertainment institutions rather than churches, monasteries, courts or guilds. This would be analogous to the way that punk was captured by the media, fashion and entertainment institutions and commoditised. The medieval church institutions captured popular piety and devotion to saints and incorporated them in 'legitimate' Catholic Christianity. Today it is not the churches who seem able to do this but 'cultural industries'. But that's not to say that there aren't connection points to matters of positive theological concern.

There may be recurring notions of fall, redemption, salvation, and so on in celebrity culture, but this does not mean that they are equivalent to Christian doctrine or, indeed, that they replace Christian theology. I want to suggest, however, they are missiologically important. What I mean by this is that they form a part of the theological resources of our culture.

I want to suggest, then, that we want to pay attention to the themes of identity, definitions of good living in order to understand how we could connect with culture. So while we might want to read celebrity as an alternative religion,, that is likely to make our approach oppositional. It would be yet another variant of the knee-jerk Christian response that simply alienates without really properly understanding what is going on or what the consequences are likely to be.

Rather, by noting the issues that people are attempting to address and by observing and understanding how they 'use' celebrity to address them we can work out ways to address those issues in culturally resonant ways or to oppose them, as necessary, in strategic and telling ways.

This article is a contribution to that.